- ThurWiki
- Features
Everything a company wiki has to be able to do.
Spaces, pages, editor, tables, search, versions, four-eyes approvals: the basic equipment by which a wiki is judged. Here it is in detail, with pictures from the demo wiki of “Muster Elektro AG”.
Spaces and pages: an order you can find your way back into.
A wiki consists of spaces: Operations, Projects, Personnel, Customers. Every space has a page tree, as deep as you like, re-sorted by dragging, with an icon, a colour and a start page of its own. Anyone who can find their way around a file system can find their way around here.
- Open and closed spaces. Open means everyone in the wiki reads along. Closed means only those named. Finished projects are archived rather than deleted.
- A start page that maintains itself. A sentence about the space, a table, and below it the macro page list, a ready-made building block that shows what has happened most recently.
- A personal space for each person. The notepad other users do not see. When a note turns into an instruction, you move the page, history and all. It is not meant for confidential matters: administrators can reach it, and when somebody leaves it remains so that a successor can go through it.
- Recycle bin. Deleted pages lie there until somebody decides. Nothing disappears through a wrong click.
An editor like a word processor.
The ribbon has three tabs: HOME for text, INSERT for everything else, TABLE as soon as the cursor stands inside a table. Keyboard shortcuts as usual. There is no markup, so no control characters anybody would have to learn. That is why even the people who have so far kept away from a wiki do write in it.
Writing at the same time
Several people on the same page, with visible cursors in their own colour. The changes flow continuously into the same document. There is no conflict for anyone to resolve.
Code, when it has to be
A code block with a choice of language and highlighting, for configurations, commands and scripts. For everything else you need no code.
Help where you are
Everywhere in the interface there is a small question mark. It leads to the text belonging to that very place: 60 help topics, written for end users, with the most common pitfalls at the end.
Tables you can actually use. Charts from your own figures.
Three things take effect only in the reading view and do not touch the document: sortable columns, a search field and a running number. Whoever sorts or filters sees the table differently. For everybody else it stays as it was.
- Sortable. The column headings become clickable. Numbers and dates are compared as such, so that 10 does not come before 9.
- Search field. It hides what does not match and counts the hits. A price list with three hundred rows becomes usable.
- A numbered column. A running number that, after sorting and filtering, always counts what is currently on show.
- A chart from the table. The macro chart takes the figures from the table above it: bars, lines, pie, several series, with values on the chart.
- Tables from outside. From a spreadsheet file (CSV), from another program's data (JSON) or from an attached Excel file, optionally converted into a real table.
Tasks where they are discussed.
Checklists sit in the minutes, not in a second tool. They are ticked off in the reading view, without editing the page. And they are gathered where somebody works through them: the macro tasks of a user collects the open items from every checklist in the wiki. Nobody has to transfer them.
Voice note: record instead of taking minutes.
Some things are said faster than they are typed. The macro voice note or meeting puts an audio recording on the page, with a player to listen to it. On request, speech recognition writes it out – that is, a program that turns speech into text. The result is called a transcript.
- Record or upload. Directly in the browser through the microphone, or as a finished recording from a telephone, a dictation machine or conferencing software (MP3, M4A, WAV, OGG, WebM). Recording in the browser works only over an encrypted connection (HTTPS).
- A transcript to correct. The speech recognition is Whisper in your own house or ChatGPT. The transcript appears before it goes onto the page; you correct names and technical terms there. Swiss German it writes out in standard German when the language is set to “de”.
- Whoever may see the page can hear it. Audio and transcript are attachments of the page and follow its rights. The search finds what stands in the transcript.
- Data protection. Tell those present that you are recording. With ChatGPT the audio leaves the house, with Whisper in your own house it does not.
Typical uses: the minutes of a meeting, dictating a fault on site, the handover on standby duty.
A search that looks inside the attachment too.
Titles, text and the content of attached PDF, Word and Excel files. What stands in an attached quotation can be found through a figure inside it, without opening it.
- Only what you may see is found. A space somebody has not been given access to does not turn up among their hits, not even as a hint.
- By sound and by meaning. A typing mistake in the search word is no reason to find nothing.
- Tables with a search field of their own. Within a page, the search field above the table narrows things further.
Versions, comments, approvals.
Working together does not mean everybody overwrites everything. ThurWiki remembers every version, allows comments on the text, and can route changes through an approver wherever four eyes are needed.
Notifications
By e-mail, Telegram or WhatsApp: on mentions, on approvals waiting and on changes to watched pages. Every person sets for themselves what should reach them.
Mentions
An @ in the text calls a person; they are notified, and their name becomes a link to their page with the tasks still open.
Watching
Whoever watches a page or a space learns about changes, gathered together rather than twenty times a day.
Finding, editing and drawing images: without leaving the house.
Searching nine image archives at once, with source, author and licence on every thumbnail. Cropping, annotating and blurring images in the browser. Drawing network diagrams and flowcharts in draw.io, which runs on our own server.
Image search across nine archives
Wikimedia Commons and Openverse without a key; Pixabay, Unsplash, Pexels, Freepik, Adobe Stock, Getty Images and iStock with an account of your own. Licensed hits are shown but not inserted; the thumbnail says why. The preview images run over our own server, so that no archive learns who in the house is looking for what.
Editing with a version history
The quick tool for the common things, a full image editor with layers for everything else. Every edit creates a new version; the old ones remain and can be brought back.
Generating images
If the subject exists nowhere, an AI draws it: for title pictures and illustrations. For technical drawings we say so plainly: unsuitable, because a generated image looks convincing and is wrong all the same.
Templates, excerpts, people.
Three things that keep a wiki in order over the years: templates for everything that recurs; excerpts, so that the same paragraph does not drift apart in five places; and people, visible as those responsible, those mentioned or those who contributed.
On the move, in your language, with your settings.
- Mobile without an app. The interface adapts; the checklist on the building site is ticked off on the phone.
- Four languages. German, English, French, Italian; each person sets their language in their profile. What is translated is the interface, not the content.
- Profile. Language, notifications, two-factor sign-in (a code from the phone on top of the password), security keys (a small device or a fingerprint confirms the sign-in) and personal access to AI services, all in one place.
- Typography per wiki. Fonts, sizes and colours are set by the wiki administrator; your pages look like your company.
So that no page quietly goes stale.
The worst thing about documentation is not the missing page. It is the page that is still there but no longer right – and nobody notices until somebody acts on it.
- A name and a date. Per page you record who stands behind the content and when they should look at it next. Recurring if you want: every 30 days, quarterly, half-yearly or yearly.
- The notice stands on the page. Once the date is reached, everyone who opens the page sees it. Including the engineer who needs the instruction right now – he then knows to ask rather than assume.
- A reminder and one click. The person responsible gets a message and confirms right in the notice that everything still holds. After that the notice is gone and the next date is set – counted from today.
- One list for you, one for the whole wiki. In the user menu stands “my reviews due”, in the wiki administration all of them. Being responsible means only that – it grants nobody any additional rights.
Turning pages into a PDF.
Sometimes a document is needed: for an audit, for the engineer with no signal, for the customer who has no wiki account. Then you tick what should come along.
- One page or a whole branch. There are two boxes per row: the first takes that page only, the second the page with all its sub-pages. You can choose across several spaces; up to 300 pages go into one document.
- Every page starts afresh. In the PDF each wiki page begins on a new sheet, in the order of the page tree – like the chapters of a manual.
- You choose how large. A “scale” field from 45 to 100 per cent, for type and content at once. Small when a wide table has to fit on one sheet; large when somebody reads the sheet at a table.
- It looks the way it looks on screen. Tables, boxes, charts and drawings stand in the PDF just as you see them on the page. The wiki prints itself; it does not build the page a second time.
- Only what you are allowed to see. What is closed to you does not go into the PDF either – and the export stops rather than quietly skipping the page.
Questions about the features
Does anything have to be installed on the workstations?
No. ThurWiki runs entirely in the browser. There is nothing to install, neither on workstations nor on mobile phones. The image editing and draw.io also run in the browser, delivered by our own server.
Can I edit tables as in Confluence?
Yes, and in the same place: the TABLE tab appears as soon as the cursor stands inside a table. Insert, move and cut rows and columns, merge and split cells, header row and header column, cell background. On top of that come three things that only take effect while reading: sortable columns, a search field and a running number.
Does the search also find content inside attached files?
Yes. The search covers titles, text and the content of attached PDF, Word and Excel files. What stands in an attached quotation can be found through a figure inside it, without opening it. Only what you are allowed to see is found.
Can we hand out pages as a PDF?
Yes. Under “Export pages as PDF” you tick in the page tree what should come along: per row either that page alone or the page with all its sub-pages, across several spaces too, up to 300 pages in one document. Every page begins on a new sheet. The PDF shows what you see on screen – with tables, boxes, charts and drawings. Pages closed to you do not come along; the export then stops rather than quietly skipping them.
What happens when two people edit the same page at once?
They see each other. Each person has a cursor in their own colour, and the changes flow continuously into the same document. There is no conflict for anyone to resolve, and no version that is quietly overwritten.
Can changes be undone?
Every save creates a version. Comparing shows what has changed; restoring creates a new version holding the old content. The history stays complete, and even an accidental restore can be undone.
Can I record a meeting and have it transcribed?
Yes, with the macro “Voice note or meeting”. You record in the browser or upload a recording, from a telephone, a dictation machine or your conferencing software. On request, speech recognition writes it out; you see the transcript before it is inserted and correct names and technical terms there. Audio and transcript become attachments of the page, and the search finds what stands in the transcript. Tell those present that you are recording. With Whisper in your own house the audio stays in the house, with ChatGPT it does not.
See it with your own content.
A demo wiki with the sample content of Muster Elektro AG, set up for you, with everything that stands on this page.